Not long ago, I was talking to an adult education professorette. She specializes in teaching people ESL (English as a Second Language). ESL is completely important for full integration especially for immigrants as it keeps them from becoming economically enslaved for generations. In fact, we have many first and second generation immigrants who don’t speak English, and that’s a travesty, and it certainly limits their upward mobility in our society and civilization.

Well, she was quite concerned because it turns out that out here in California they are cutting back at the community college level and the universities when it comes to adult education. In the area where I am at, often high schools are used in the evenings for adult school. They use the same classrooms, and a new instructor comes in to teach those types of job retraining things that people need, along with ESL. Without that funding, and without sharing the costs with the high school, the high schools also have a challenge with their budgets, as they lose those economies of scale.

All this is happening at a time when the universities are raising tuition so high that fewer and fewer people are going to be able to abort colleges without taking out huge loans. Worse, many community colleges are cutting back, and the kids graduating from high school can’t get the classes they need, or the prerequisite classes so they can go onto a four year University, or even if they can, it takes them longer than two years to get through the program. Often they are a few units short even to get their AA to move on.

Further, as I sit in the local Starbucks and watch the college students from both the University and the community college come in with their homework, they often complain about the increased costs of community classes, textbooks, and wonder how they will ever pay off those student loans once they eventually graduate from the four year University considering the job market. Many of them know that once they do get their degree from the University, there may not be any jobs in that sector.

They too will be economically enslaved just as if they didn’t speak English, albeit for a different reason. We have a problem out here in California with our colleges, universities, and adult education programs. I don’t believe we are addressing it correctly, nor do I feel that the people in charge now know how to fix it. Rather they are asking for more taxpayer’s money and throwing more good money after bad on the taxpayer’s dime as they create an even larger bubble in the academic industrial complex. Please consider all this and think on it.